"Sex without condoms is the new engagement ring!" screams an NPR headline that was not at all vying for the attention of this blog. Which is to address: a lot of controversial stuff has been said about the increasingly popular practice of condomless sex by some of us on this blog, but here is the irrefutable: it feels awesome.* Maybe that is because I have only really engaged in bareback sex with the types of dudes who don't fear HPV and whose diseases I don't particularly fear, because the worst thing I can think of about most of them is the ensuing lifetime of awkward conversations, and the worst thing about that is that awkward conversations summon memories, and summoning bad memories every time you're about to fuck a new person is no way to live, but, if you can smile and say (hypothetically!) "Hey, just so you know, I have [insert STD here], but I got them from this really hilarious guy who is still one of my best friends, so it was kind of worth it," before you do it with a new person, it's almost nice. Like: oh yeah, that was a good time.

It was a good time because we ate pizza and a good time because it was just starting to get cold and a good time because of that absurd girl at the bar who referred to her coworkers as "lumpen" and it was a good time because we didn't use condoms, and when you don't use condoms you're actually really touching one another everywhere, without any barriers separating the nerve endings and slowing that whole ripply domino effect thing that happens when you're fucking someone you know you won't regret getting all sweaty and deep breathy and worked up over. Maybe that's because you figure you'll always be friends, or even theoretically get married to one another, in which case you'd be safe, though not really safe, because if you read the newspaper you know he might start fucking someone else and bring you back a strain of something, in which case of course the itching and bumps are probably the least of your problems, which I think is why a lot of people fear marriage. At least as much as they fear herpes, anyway.

*Public service announcement: You should still use protection, people! -Ed.